When we look at original computers back in the early to mid 20th century, we will see machines that were gigantic in size such as the Harvard Mark I and ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). These massive computers took up a lot of space (about the size of a large room) and expected results/calculations…
From a demo to a dystopia?
More than fifty years ago, Doug Engelbart showed a preview of the future. Engelbart’s idea was that computers of the future should be optimized for human needs: communication and collaboration. Instead of punch cards and taking a while to process, computers should have keyboards and screens that are responsive. So, he with his time built…
From zero interaction to passive interaction, to active interaction
Before Doug Englebart introduced his keyboard and mouse prototype, users cannot interact with computers, since computers cannot provide any intermediate results and show running processes to users, and, in contrast, users cannot control and interact with computers. What the users and computers can do is that users can submit computation tasks and computers will show…
Different Thinking About Man-Computer Symbiosis
Licklider said, “Men are noisy, narrow-band devices.” On the other hand, “computer machines single-minded and constrained.” There is a difference between a human and a computer. A computer doesn’t need to take a rest or eat a sandwich. It doesn’t have to rack its brains for an elusive answer.Artificially intelligent machines write many of today’s…
From Doug Englebart’s demonstration to Interaction Design
Doug Englebart and his team demonstrated the oN-Line System, which featured many of the elements prevalent in modern computing, including the use of a mouse and keyboard for efficient navigation and input, video-conferencing, multiple windows, and collaborative work functions. Engelbart’s vision was to shift the focus from the computer to the user, which is the…
Catt Small and Problems of portraying Blackness in Video Games
Catt Small is a product designer, game maker, and developer. In an interview with “Gaming on Tumblr”, she considered herself “a creative technologist”. She is “an artist who loves to learn and explore through the lens of code and other technology-centric resources.” She started coding around the age of 10 and designing at the age…
Xia Peisu
Biography2 At first, I searched for Xia Peisu in Google Chrome, and it showed Mr. Xia, which made me feel confused. After investigation, I found out that Xia Peisu was very powerful as a rare woman in a social environment where there were almost no female scientists and almost all men. Computer science became an…
Computing process
Doug Englebart’s team proposes a demo of how the data are related to another, and how it’s classified, using the prototype of an early computer and the three tools: mouse, keyboard, and a keypad. Doug Englebart types the text on the blank screen. There’s a beep sound for every aspect of the action. There are…
Abby Covert
“I’m an information architect who loves to make sense of messes.”1 – Abby Covert defines herself with a single sentence. Abby Covert has started off with a graphic design career, working in layout design, printing, concept research, and branding design. Then she switched to Information architecture. Since 2004, Abby devoted to the information architecture community…
Mid-century Designers are “Design for People”
In the world of interaction design, there are a lot of ideas discover by some successful designers. Like Eames couple, Ladislav Sutnar, and Karl Gerstner. Even though they are successful in different areas of design, but their ideas do help interaction designers to improve and create a better experience for their users. Ray and Charles…
Man-Computer Symbiosis Evaluation
The computer pioneer J. C. R. Licklider wrote a famous essay titled “Man-Computer Symbiosis” in 1960, where he predicted a close coupling between humans and electronics in the future. He anticipated that we would be able to interact with computers in the same way we communicate with our co-workers whose skills supplement our own. It…
Amazing Female Graphic Designer– Susan Kare
Many women in tech have helped shape the modern world, such as Ada Lovelace , Hedy Lamarr or Annie Easley. Today, I wanted to honour a particular woman in tech who’s had such an immense impact on our lives. She is Susan Kare. Susan Kare is a graphic designer who designed many of the interface elements…
Grandfather of Video Games: Miyamoto Shigeru
Shigeru Miyamoto is Japanese artist, video game designer and game director who is well known for his work with Nintendo. He was born in 1952 in the city of Sonobe, Japan. Graduating from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts in 1970 with a degree in Industrial Design, he originally intended to design for toys and…
Early design techniques
The great early designers such as the Eames, Gerstner and Sutnar were so good at what they did because they used the iterative process to create designs that put human functionality before form. They also wanted to design ways to bring quality at an affordable price. The Eames chair evolution was evidence of this. Using…
Ruth Bhavsar – Midcentury Bonus Writing
Mid-century designers participated in a wide-array of practices, all of which ultimately supplemented their viewpoints and work. Their expansive ways of teaching can show us how design in our world is an ecosystem of products working together and riffing off of each other’s features. It’s not enough for a product to be stylistically pleasing; functionality…
Ruth Bhavsar – Midcentury Designers
The Eames couple, Gerstner, and Sutnar were pioneers of Interaction Design techniques, and their work spanned a wide array of disciplines. All of them put the user and usability at the center of their work, and made integral breakthroughs when combining form and function. Ray and Charles Eames designed and iterated a prolific amount of…
Human Factors in Design
Dreyfuss published The Measure of Man: Human Factors in Design; He pioneered the idea of human factors affecting design. Dreyfus learned about people, their tendencies, their reservations, their ambitions, and their unbridled passions. He used functional through products that people interact with. Discovering opportunities for rapid innovation is understanding “people,” not “users.” Thus a sound…
A Better Designer…
One of the reasons for the difficulty to pin down these Mid-Century into one discipline is because they were not constrained in just one aspect or area of the design. Instead, they were considering how to finesse the human experience all around. One thing that inspired me in Charles and Ray Eames’ creative process is…
Observation-a must for design research
Behavior learning is a key part of design research nowadays, and I would like to strongly mention observation. When Dreyfuss and his team realized that the users won’t just stay in where the phone was placed, they reduced the weight of the princess phone and made it portable. The insight is based on observation. Here…
Measuring human bodies!
As a designer with an industrial design background, I just couldn’t imagine how important the measurement of the man, woman, kids, and those with special needs are. It definitely is a milestone for design, for all industrial design products used by humans are more or less need the measurement standard from the human factors. The…